eating a myriad of offices? I don't see how those
nations have the audacity to live at all. There's Austria, which has
less than a hundred clerks in her war ministry, while the salaries and
pensions of ours amount to a third of our whole budget, a thing that was
unheard of before the Revolution. I sum up all I've been saying in
one single remark, namely, that the Academy of Inscriptions and
Belles-lettres, which seems to have very little to do, had better offer
a prize for the ablest answer to the following question: Which is the
best organized State; the one that does many things with few officials,
or the one that does next to nothing with an army of them?"

Poiret. "Is that your last word?"

Bixiou. "Yes, sir! whether English, French, German or Italian,--I let
you off the other languages."

Poiret [lifting his hands to heaven]. "Gracious goodness! and they call
you a witty man!"

Bixiou. "Haven't you understood me yet?"

Phellion. "Your last observation was full of excellent sense."

Bixiou. "Just as full as the budget itself, and like the budget again,
as complicated as it looks simple; and I set it as a warning, a beacon,
at the edge of this hole, this gulf, this volcano, called, in the
language of the 'Constitutionel,' 'the political horizon.'"

Poiret. "I should much prefer a comprehensible explanation."

Bixiou. "Hurrah for Rabourdin! there's my explanation; that's my
opinion. Are you satisfied?"

Colleville [gravely]. "Monsieur Rabourdin had but one defect."

Poiret. "What was it?"

Colleville. "That of being a statesman instead of a subordinate
official."

Phellion [standing before Bixiou]. "Monsieur! why did you, who
understand Monsieur Rabourdin so well, why did you make that inf--that
odi--that hideous caricature?"

Bixiou. "Do you forget our bet? don't you know I was backing the devil's
game, and that your bureau owes me a dinner at the Rocher de Cancale?"

Poiret [much put-out]. "Then it is a settled thing that I am to leave
this government office without ever understanding a sentence, or a
single word uttered by Monsieur Bixiou."

Bixiou. "It is your own fault; ask these gentlemen. Gentlemen, have you
understood the meaning of my observations? and were those observations
just, and brilliant?"

All. "Alas, yes!"

Minard. "And the proof is that I shall send in my resignation. I shall
plunge into industrial avocations."

Bixiou. "What! have you managed to invent a mechanical corset, o